1UP News

Fan complaints to be addressed to some extent this summer with free DLC.

Following an incredible backlash over the ending of Mass Effect 3, BioWare promised last month that it would address the complaints of those who were displeased with the way Commander Shepard's story came to an end. The way in which it plans to do that was briefly outlined today, although we won't be getting our hands on the solution for another few months.

Put simply, there were two sides that most people could fall on in this debate: Those who are upset with the ending and want a new one (or at least more content) and those who believe BioWare should be free to do what they want with their game's story (and therefore don't want a new ending). As intimated last month, BioWare is going for a middle ground between the two. It today announced plans to release a downloadable content pack called Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut. The goal of it is to provide additional closure for fans who are seeking it after pouring in dozens of hours across the Mass Effect games.

We wrangled up the 1UP editors
to weigh in on exactly why we loved SotN 15 years ago, why we still
love it, and why we'll probably be playing it in another 15 years. The
fact that the four of us can all have very different, yet very valid
reasons why we love SotN is a true testament to the game's undying
quality.

Consumerist readers found EA to be worse than Bank of America and 30 others.

Electronic Arts is the winner (loser?) of The Consumerist's annual Worst Company in America tournament this year. Following a round of nominations and weeks of head-to-head, March Madness-style voting, the Redwood City, California-based videogame publisher was named the top vote-getter in the finals today in which it was squaring off against Bank of America.

Before going any further it's important to note this is an Internet poll, and as such can't be taken as an actual indication of what the population believes is the worst company around. Yet even with that caveat in mind, it's hard to fathom that a company responsible for making games could be loathed so vociferously.

Moments where you've continued gaming despite discomfort.

If our
recent review of Kid
Icarus Uprising for the Nintendo
3DS, we praised a great deal of elements in the game. From gorgeous
visuals to a plethora of features and options, Kid Icarus is one of the
heftiest portable packages in a long time. Maybe it's this wealth of
content that contributed to the game's major flaw: it's just plain
uncomfortable to play. Uprising forces you to contort your hands into
foreign positions in order to navigate the relatively complex
interface. But despite this discomfort, the game still inspired us to
press on and play through the pain. This got us thinking of some other
moments in our gaming history that have left us battered, bruised, but
still wanting more.

Trying to stifle the used game market will hurt, not help, console makers.

Can it be that another crop of new consoles is just beyond the horizon? It seems like just yesterday we were talking about the Nintendo Revolution or the Xbox 2 or the PlayStation... 3. And yet, here we are, once again, letting our imaginations run wild about what the future holds. Details are sparse at best about the next Xbox and the next PlayStation, but there is one rumor that has gotten a fair amount of attention. That rumor is that neither system will play used games. I'm here to tell you why that won't be happening. Not this generation at least.

Firstly, it will be a technological kludge. Let's look at DRM as an example of companies using technology to achieve a goal. How long does it normally take some resourceful hacker to break an otherwise "unbreakable" DRM scheme? A few months? For every man-hour a company expends trying to write a piece of code, there are literally hundreds of hacker-hours spent cracking it. It's just a numbers game. If Microsoft and Sony implement a system that prevents their consoles from playing used games, it will be the mission of studious hackers to crack that system. Remember what happened to Sony when they got rid of the Other OS option on the PS3? The hacker community was furious and it ended up costing Sony quite a lot of time and money. Now, I don't advocate this sort of thing, threatening financial harm through hacking, but I am at least acknowledging that it's a real scenario that will play out. The simple fact is that setting up a system to prevent the systems from playing used games will be futile. Someone will figure out a way around it.

If the reports prove to be true, will anyone care if Wii U is not a major step ahead of 360 and PS3?

A lot about the Wii U remains unknown. We do know it's coming later this year and many more details are going to be shared at E3 in June. In the meantime, a new report has emerged suggesting the system is less powerful than many expect.

Multiple sources have indicated to GamesIndustry.biz that the Wii U is less powerful than both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Nintendo didn't exactly go cutting-edge with the technology it used in the Wii, but we're now talking about a system being underpowered as compared with systems that will have been out for seven and six years, respectively, at the time of the Wii U's launch. That doesn't inspire confidence that Wii U will be anything more than a stopgap for when the "real" next-gen consoles come along a year or two later. But does this report actually make sense, and if it's true, does it even matter?

What we know so far about Epic's new title.

When a new game gets announced,
it‚??s fun to pretend that it will be everything you ever
wanted. It is especially easy to have wonderful hopes and dreams when
the details are very sparse. The game I'd like to discuss
today that we know very little about is Epic Games' new
title, Fortnite.
The game was announced at the VGAs
back in December, and we still
have very little information on the mechanics, its platform, or the release
window. Take a look at the teaser trailer below, then you'll
know everything that I know.

A look back at a time when our medium was awash with celebrities.

Hollywood has always had its fingers on
the pulse of popular culture, so when video games began to blossom
during the '80s, Tinseltown saw an opportunity to expand. Within a few
years, the gaming market was awash with titles featuring A-list actors,
iconic athletes, and all manner of celebrity in-between. It's hard to
imagine a time when star-power had such sway in video games, especially
when you consider that the concept of celebrity has devolved over the
past decade into anyone who's willing to share their messy existence of
a life in front of a Bravo TV camera. The number of actors, musicians
and athletes who lent their likenesses to video games throughout the
'90s is absolutely staggering. There's no way we could go through all
the instances where the player could interact with a celebrity, so we
narrowed the list down to a select few games that represent the vast
scope of this strange trend.

How much did games cost in the good ol' days? Quite a lot compared to now, as it happens.

Infographics may be old and busted, but charticles will live forever. Hot on the heels of yesterday's '90s Console Release Charticle comes this eye-poppingly factual sequel: A comparison of the retail cost of games in the '90s versus their equivalents today, matched with inflation-adjusted figures to show the real cost of those classics in terms of actual 2012 buying power. We've carefully selected some of the top releases of the '90s against very similar titles of the past couple of years, researched their initial suggested retail prices, and lined them up side-by-side. For maximum soul-destroying accuracy, we also plugged in their prices to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator to determine what their original asking prices equal in today's terms. For Japanese releases, we used x-rates' historical conversion calculator to see what import games cost in American dollars at the time.

The short of it? Games back then cost a lot less to develop than they do now, but they cost a lot more for the consumer. Some of that can be ascribed to the higher cost of cartridge media, but even so it helps you understand why so many publishers are doubling down on AAA games or flocking to social media.

New details on the next World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria, recently began making the rounds. Some former players are now eager to return to that world while others remain indifferent to the notion of forking over $15 a month to play what they feel is now a stale game. I find myself in a sort of gray area between those two: I'm always eager to see what Blizzard has come up with while also feeling less enthusiastic about MMOs in general than I used to, though I wasn't really sure why I felt this way.

The return of the treasure chest in Mists of Pandaria, strangely enough, is what made me realize what one of my issues is: The sense of exploration in MMOs is not what it used to be.

Players can now pay real-world money to gain access to unlockable weapons and perks.

The latest update for Battlefield 3 is now here, bringing with it numerous improvements, changes, and features, one of which is not sitting well with some players.

Many of the improvements to the PC version do appear to be good things. The commo rose now handles better and has new options, most notably the ability to call out for ammo, health, or repairs at any time. Gone are the days of desperately looking around for a medic when badly in need of health, which I can't say I will miss. Other additions: jeeps now have horns to help alert teammates you're trying to pick up; helicopter pilots are now better rewarded for flying well; the SOFLAM is effective even when you're not controlling it; suppression bonuses are easier to earn; all players have IR flares from the start to help them succeed as pilots; and the minimap has been improved. That still leaves a number of issues unaddressed, but these all strike me as changes for the better.

Five delicious examples of product placement gone awry.

Back in the halcyon days of the
early
'90s, food extended far beyond the hot
plate by frequently making its
way into our video games. Companies across the entire edible spectrum
saw this new fan-dangled medium of interactivity and thought it would
be
a great idea to allow gamers to violate the cardinal rule of the dinner
table and actually play with their food. Sadly, most of these efforts
resulted in less-than stellar results, as indicated by the following
examples of product placement games. Keep in mind that a lot of these
were full priced releases -- this was long before the time when Sneak
King came alongside a BK Veggie
with cheese. Seth
Macy wrote a great feature about
Corporate
Schlock a while back, but this
time around the focus is going to be strictly on the Decade
That Clinton Built. Aside from
the monetary
joys that stem from product placement, the question still remains: Why
the '90s were such a humid breeding ground for licensed games based on
food, the places that serve food, and the mascots who champion food?

There's going to be a very
distinct generational divide with this one, so prepare yourselves. The
Noid was a mid-'80s creation by Domino's Pizza that used each of the
seven deadly sins in order to ruin your pizza experience. Delivery guy
got a flat tire? Noid. Cheese is burnt? Noid. Immediately regret that
you're filling your body with the physical manifestation of shame?
Well, the Noid's only partly responsible for that. Like all great
mascots of the era, the Noid got his fair share of video game titles,
but the one I want to focus on is the 1990 NES classic Yo! Noid.
Without a comma between the two words, one can only assume that the
title is yelling in order to get your attention. Misused punctuation
aside, Yo! Noid is actually a revolutionary entry into the pantheon of
gaming. Instead of being a delivery boy trying to avoid the Noid, the
game shook the very foundations of storytelling by placing us in
control of the trickster god; in many ways, Yo! Noid is the Paradise
Lost of video games. Sadly,
the game commits the cardinal sin of
platformers by switching the functions of the A and B buttons. Could
this have been the Noid's plan all along?

Take a look back at the games and systems that shaped a decade.

You love charticles! We love charticles! Wait, what's a charticle, you ask? As part of our coverage for The '90s Revisited, we decided nothing tells a story better than visual aids. In this case, the '90s Console Release Charticle -- it's a chart, and an article! -- displays the lifespan of consoles in the '90s and highlights a few important games from that era. Just don't call it an infographic; that term is so... '80s.

The system, codenamed Orbis, is said to be coming late next year and won't be friendly to used game players.

The PlayStation 4 is widely believed to be between one-and-a-half and two-and-a-half years away, meaning it may still be more than a year before any official details make their way out. Yet we're already hearing some preliminary information about Sony's next home game console, including details which will not be welcomed by those who value the ability to buy, sell, and trade used videogames.

As digital content has become more commonplace, games have increasingly become non-tradable commodities. Anything purchased through Steam is yours forever; even if you never play a game you've bought (unless it's purchased as a gift), it is linked to your account for good and cannot be borrowed or sold. Digital games on consoles, whether they be from the Xbox Live Arcade, Wii Virtual Console, or PlayStation Network are also permanent purchases. The same can be said for app purchases on iOS or Android, and this extends beyond games to digital music and movies acquired through iTunes or Amazon.